Chef Mitsunori Kusakabe at Kusakabe in San Francisco, Calif., is seen on Saturday, July 19th, 2014.

Chef Mitsunori Kusakabe at Kusakabe in San Francisco, Calif., is...

At Maruya, you do not order spicy tuna rolls. You order a night with a sushi chef.

Last week, the $85 omakase dinner at Masaki Sasaki's 9-month-old Mission restaurant began with shots of chilled corn soup and waves of small appetizers, followed by three gleaming squares of sashimi. Only then would the chef begin laying out a series of nigiri. His choice, of course.

"Omakase means, 'I leave it up to you,' " says Hiroko Shimbo, author of "The Sushi Experience." In Japan, she adds, restaurants specializing in tempura or stews may offer a tasting menu featuring the chef's best dishes, but omakase sushi can only be found at the most formal, most expensive sushi restaurants.

In the Bay Area, "omakase" is a term that the knowledgeable have offered up to sushi chefs for decades. Order omakase, and you're asking the chef to set before you the day's best sushi until you hit your price cap or give up.

And more restaurants are offering it. In San Francisco, the past year alone has seen the arrival of Maruya, Pabu and Kusakabe (the subject of this week's review), which all allow - or, in Kusakabe's case, require - diners to order fixed-price omakase menus.

Sasaki, who has been making sushi in San Francisco since 1984, says that after 30 years he lost patience with Double Dragon Niners rolls and other American-style maki.

"I finally found no place I wanted to work," he says. So he emulated Japan's exclusive sushi bars, partnering with Hidebumi Sueyoshi to open a tiny spot - the former Bar Bambino - where all eyes are on the two chefs and where 90 percent of diners order omakase.

Bay Area catches up

San Francisco's new appreciation for omakase did not materialize out of the void - we are in the age of the tasting menu, after all. Diners are increasingly paying big sums for long, choreographed dining experiences.

Still, the Bay Area has lagged behind Los Angeles and New York when it comes to omakase. In Southern California, fixed-price omakase meals date back to the late 1980s, says Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold, at restaurants run by Kazunori Nozawa, Nobu Matsuhisa and Masa Takayama. Now, Gold said in an e-mail, "diners in Los Angeles are loath for some reason to splash for expensive menus in Western restaurants, but are willing to pay a lot for omakase sushi."

New York magazine critic Adam Platt thinks the rise in omakase-focused restaurants in Manhattan is connected to the country's rising fortunes.

"In New York, sushi is the power food, replacing the steak house," Platt says. "Finance guys love sushi. They have their own sushi guys. They go to Tokyo."

Then there's the Jiro effect. Just as Alexander Payne's "Sideways" turned a generation of fledgling oenophiles on to Pinot Noir, David Gelb's 2012 documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" seductively portrayed the minimalist brilliance of omakase sushi.

Sasaki credits "Jiro" with educating diners about omakase. So does Ichi Sushi's Tim Archuleta, who says that five years ago, omakase represented 25 percent of his meals. Now it's 75 percent.

At his newly relocated and expanded Bernal Heights restaurant, Archuleta plans to dedicate a four-seat bar to omakase service. Ichi has just been too packed for the chef to complete it.

Sasaki is not alone in yearning to shake off American customers' limited tastes. At Kusakabe, Mitsunori Kusakabe says he decided on the tasting-menu format to break customers' insecurities around what to order.

Easy for customers

"Japan has so many varieties of fish and types of techniques, so I just wanted to make it easier for customers to enjoy (them)," he says.

The courses of his $95 dinner, Kusakabe explains, are inspired by Japan's formal kaiseki dining, which balances colors, flavors and cooking methods.

"If I serve warm sushi, the next dish is cold," he says. "If the first dish is rich, the next dish is sour, then salty. It's like a melody."

Similarly, says Sasaki, the eight nigiri he places before the diner, one after the other in gentle succession, follow a prescribed order: Tuna is followed by aomono (a class of blue-backside fish), then salmon and one or two shiny-skin fish such as mackerel and sardines.

"If you want American rolls," he says, "there are three sushi restaurants near me."